{"id":47630,"date":"2023-09-12T11:43:26","date_gmt":"2023-09-12T10:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.glassmountains.co.uk\/?p=47630"},"modified":"2023-09-17T15:10:39","modified_gmt":"2023-09-17T14:10:39","slug":"google-analytics-4-metrics-a-2023-guide-for-ga4-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glassmountains.co.uk\/campfire\/google-analytics-4-metrics-a-2023-guide-for-ga4-users\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Analytics 4 Metrics: A 2023 Guide for GA4 Users"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google’s free web analytics platform. With its enhanced capabilities come new metrics and definitions that can trip up even experienced analysts. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interpreting key GA4 dimensions and metrics accurately is crucial for understanding your website’s performance and making data-driven decisions. In this post, we will demystify some commonly misunderstood metrics in GA4 for website tracking (we will not discuss app tracking).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Average Engagement Time in GA4 <\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Engagement time is a new metric in GA4 that measures how long users interact with your website. It provides a sense of how engaging your content is. The key in engagement time definition is that it\u2019s only measured when the website is \u201cin focus\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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What does a web page in focus mean? It simply means the user was viewing your website. GA4 does not measure time when a user isn\u2019t engaging with your website – for example, when your website is open in a browser tab but you are looking at a different website (different tab is active). <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Analytics 4 way of measuring time on page is way more accurate than in Universal Analytics. Let\u2019s look at a few examples and see the difference between <\/span>Universal Analytics time on page<\/b> in comparison to <\/span>GA4 engagement time<\/b>:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

User only visits one page<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Universal Analytics would not record time on page as this was calculated as a difference between 2 timers. First timer starts when the first page is loaded, second timer starts when the second page is loaded. Because we only have one page load, Universal Analytics can\u2019t calculate the difference.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Google Analytics 4 will start a timer when the session starts. It will also record time when user leaves the page and send that data to GA4. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Website crashes during user visit<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Universal Analytics would struggle with time again. Time spent on pages before the site crashed would be recorded, but any time on active page when site crashed is lost.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

GA4 documentation lists a site crash<\/span><\/a> as one of the events that trigger sending engagement time which means time on page is recorded.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

User views a page and engages with it <\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s assume a user visits a page, engages with it for 20 seconds and then opens another tab in their browser to view another website. They then come back after 20 minutes and visit another page on your website.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Universal Analytics would report time on page as around 20 minutes 20 seconds. Google Analytics 4 would record only the engaged time (around 20 seconds). <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Average engagement time accounts only for active time spent, excluding all idle moments in a session. Therefore, GA4 provides a more accurate measure of user engagement by only counting the time when a user is actively viewing your website.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

GA4 Unique Pageviews vs. Pageviews vs. Views <\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

These metrics sound similar but have distinct meanings:<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unique pageviews<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This metric is no longer available in Google Analytics 4. There are <\/span>custom solutions for unique page views <\/span><\/a>you can try to \u2018fake measure\u2019 them. However, the metric we were used to in Universal Analytics is no longer available. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pageviews and Views<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Total number of pages viewed. Repeated views of a single page are counted. So a user who views one page and refreshes it 99 times will report 100 pageviews to that page. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Views is the new GA4 name for pageviews. In your reporting, you can use either the event count for events that are page_views or simply use the views metric, as both will report the same number.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Active Users vs Total Users vs Users<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Those can be quite confusing as built-in GA4 reports like to mix those metrics.\u00a0<\/span>But once you understand the key differences between Active Users, Total Users and Users it will become easier to understand both pre-built Google Analytics 4 report as well as custom reports you build yourself. Below we cover most important GA4 user metrics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Total users<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Total number of unique users who logged an event in a given timeframe. This will include both users who land on your site and leave and those who engage with the website. This metric is probably the closest to \u2018Users\u2019 from Universal Analytics as (similarly to UA) it does not care how engaged a user is.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Active users<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Users who had: <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n